This is the Rose Window Beret by Anne Kuo Lukito. It was featured in the Spring 2010 Interweave Knits issue.

I bought the yarn, a nice wool, at Gate City Yarns (Greensboro, N.C.) two Decembers ago and just now got around to using it. I began the project sometime in June and finished it during our drive to D.C. for vacation in August.

I had to restart the project a couple of times because I was teaching myself how to read a lace pattern. With some help from several sites, I was able to get turned around. Here’s a few places to start: Knit Picks (I used this reference a lot), the For Dummies site (the publisher of the For Dummies books) and Knitty.

The hat doesn’t look exactly like it should because I haven’t blocked it yet. I really should do that so the pretty lace pattern shows up.

While in Greensboro, we visited Country Park and Guilford Courthouse National Military Park.

I used to walk around Country Park’s paved trail during the few months I lived in Greensboro several years ago. The paved trail is hilly and winds around man made lakes.

Many families, walkers, dog owners and bikers use this trail. There are paddle boats, fishing, playgrounds and picnic shelters.

What I consider the main entrance is north of the Natural Science Center’s parking lot on Lawndale Drive, so it was a nice addition to our trip to the science center. (There’s also a second entrance located south of the science center. The park runs behind the center.)

From Country Park, we walked along a trail that connects to the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. This national park has a paved walking, biking and driving trail and some dirt trails through woods on the property.

Throughout the park there are monuments, grave stones and interpretive signs commemorating the Revolutionary War battle here. The Battle of Guilford Courthouse weakened Cornwallis’ army and he surrendered several months later in Yorktown, Va.

This traveling exhibit displays several bodies and body parts that have gone through a process called polymer preservation. Besides showing the respiratory, circulatory, reproduction and other body systems, there are examples of organs with cancer, a diseased lung and organs that are enlarged for various reasons, such as infection. It may sound like a weird Valentine’s Day trip to you, but I loved it!

The exhibit is only at the center through March 6, so you’ve got a couple more weeks to visit and check it out. The museum is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Sunday and is located on Lawndale Drive in Greensboro.

There were a ton of people there to visit the museum and the exhibit. A coworker, who went Sunday, said a museum employee told her that 1,300 people visited on Saturday! The museum gave people tickets and allowed people into the exhibit in shifts.

We had the 12:30 time and had an hour to kill before we could enter, so we walked around the museum itself and the small zoo behind the building.

Downstairs are several science labs were kids can get their hands on some projects and experiments. I think most of the labs are held as classes and you have to register. When we were there, there were kids in the physics lab building with Legos. I couldn’t see what they were working on, but the kids were intently working together in small groups. Cute!

We peeked in the biology and herpetology labs and an aquatic area to look at the various creatures in aquariums and such. There were snakes, lizards, morays, turtles and fish.

A two-headed yellow-bellied slider turtle.

A moray, which is related to an eel.

A snake.

A hellbender, which is a salamander

Another snake; this time a rattler. I don’t know what’s with Chris’s obsession with snake pictures! 🙂

Iguana

Outside in the zoo there are turkeys and peacocks wandering around the park, lorikeets, gibbons, lemurs, tigers and a petting farm with goats, burros and other animals.

John Thomas York has announced he and fellow poet, Elizabeth “Beth” Lindsey Rogers, will recite some of their poetry at 8 p.m. July 8 at Tate Street Coffee House, 334 Tate Street, Greensboro, N.C.

From the press release:

York grew up in Yadkin County, N.C., and has degrees from Wake Forest and Duke Universities. He’s also received a master’s in fine arts in creative writing from University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

York’s work has appeared in “Appalachian Journal,” “International Poetry Review,” “Greensboro Review” and other regional journals.

His poetry chapbook, “Johnny’s Cosmology,” was published by the Hummingbird Press of Winston-Salem, N.C.

Beth Rogers grew up in Greensboro where she attended Southeast Guilford High School and Early College at Guilford. Rogers graduated from Oberlin College in 2007, majoring in writing and dance.

From 2007-09, Rogers served as an Oberlin Shansi Fellow, teaching and living in rural China.

Rogers’ poetry has appeared in “The Chautauqua Literary Journal,” “The Country Dog Review” and on “Poetry Daily.”

This fall, Rogers begins the master’s in fine arts program in creative writing at Cornell University.